The present invention generally relates to web automaton systems, and more particularly relates to generating automated web browsing scripts.
The World Wide Web has become an integral part of our daily activities. People browse the Web for information (e.g., reading newspapers), to conduct transactions (e.g., buying a book), and so on. Most often the goal of web browsing is to accomplish a task, such as buying a book, checking flight status, or paying a bill. Each such task is a sequence of web actions, such as visiting a website, clicking a link to select a category (e.g., the fiction category on a book seller website), clicking a link to select an item (e.g., a particular book), and clicking a button to add that item to a shopping cart. The execution of the actions on the website accomplishes a goal (e.g., buying the book). Some of these tasks are performed repeatedly by users. Web automaton systems allow users to record scripts while conducting such tasks. The recorded scripts can be saved in a repository and reused at later times. For example, a user can create a script for “buying a book” that can be repeatedly executed later. Such a script is known as a “task-script” because the script accomplishes a task.